Posts Tagged ‘First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution’

Michael Ruse, editor of the Cambridge Series in the Philosophy of Biology and founding editor of the professional journal “Biology and Philosophy” is a hardcore Darwinist. Yet he considers both Dawkins and Dennett “dangerous.” Ruse is worried that if Dawkins and Dennett make evolution and atheism one (they do!) then Intelligent Design advocates will have a legal basis for its discussion in science classrooms. Why? Because teaching Darwinian evolution in the classroom as equal to atheism would violate the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Ruse has a valid point. Sooner or later Secular Humanism as a religion will be in the courts, and atheism will be a key element in the discussion. Already the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has declared atheism a religion. But Ruse, who teaches at Florida State University, is even more direct than Dawkins and Dennett, who equate atheism and evolution. In a telling article published in the Canadian National Post (May 13, 2000) he writes, “Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion-a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality …. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.”

Secular Humanists generally deny their world view is a religion. Their opponents, however, argue that Secular Humanism IS as much a religion as Christianity, Islam, et al, and, therefore, should not be the religion of American public schools. Ruse gives the whole Secular Humanist case away when he says, “Evolution therefore came into being as a kind of secular ideology, an explicit substitution for Christianity. It stressed laws against miracles and, by analogy, it promoted progress against providence …. One of the most popular books of the era was Religion Without Revelation, by the evolutionist Julian Huxley, grandson of Thomas Huxley.”